Unexercising

Ok – I need to preface this post by making it clear that I am not your classic work-out guy. I get into working out for a few months and then it usually fizzles out as I turn my attention to coming up with excuses for not working out. When I do work out, I have no idea how most of the equipment works and I usually come away with some type of old man injury from trying to get a piece of equipment to work in the wrong way. But one thing I do know is that when I’m working out, I am doing something. I feel strain in my “muscles”, sweat some and I even worry that when I’m too engrossed in my music, I grunt. But I continue to find it, I don’t know, curious, when I find people who come all the way to the gym, and do NOTHING!!! They are unexercisers. Lots of these people are older (though not all), they stroll around with a certain obliviousness and very often, they have inappropriate workout clothing on (jeans, pants, sweaters with scenes on them, dress shoes). They were probably told by their doctors to get out and exercise, but I decided tonight to officially not count as exercise a person sitting nearly motionless on a stationary bike for a very short period of time. Simply doesn’t count. I came close tonight to stating matter of factly to this unexerciser next to me “for what it’s worth, I don’t consider your “efforts” there exercise – you’d probably burn more calories if you just stood next to the bike and thought about riding it”. Of course the best part was that she was on the bike for a total of 3 minutes and the digital thing said she burned 9 calories. She then walked around the track 2 times going so slowly the runners had difficulty judging how to pass her. Nice workout, nice.